The Church of Mexico.--Its present Condition and Power.--The Number
of the "Religios."--The Wealth of the Church.--The Money-power
of the Church.--The Power of Assassination.--Educating the
People robs the Priest.--Making and adoring Images.--The Progress
downward.
The Catholic Church of Mexico is a peculiar institution. Its historical
antecedents have been considered in previous chapters in connection
with other subjects. Men no longer whisper their unbelief with
trembling, nor have they any longer to dread inquisitorial fires if
they refuse to pay tithes to the bishop, or if they neglect to bestow
rich gifts upon the priests. Still the Church survives the losses of
this important engine of piety, and continues unmodified by passing
events. In the midst of revolutions it stands unchanged, a relic of the
last century. It stands like a great showman's wagon from which the
horses have been detached, and children, great and small, are collected
around to look at its images. Unfortunately, there is an abundance of
full-grown children in a country where, for centuries, a combination of
spiritual and temporal despotisms have dwarfed the intellects of men
down to the standard of a toy-shop religion, which had long rejoiced in
crushing the human intellect, while it disdained to enlighten the
humblest understanding.
[Illustration: MEXICAN PRIESTS TRAVELING.]
Mexico is the only Catholic country in which the Church has remained
unchanged during all the revolutions of the last half century. The
French infidel armies, and the wars and revolutions that followed the
French invasions, overturned the Church of Spain and Italy, so that the
Church organization that now exists in those peninsulas is a new
creation. Not so in Mexico. Its revolution was for the purpose of
saving the privileges of the Church from the too sweeping reforms of
the Cortes of Spain. And there it now stands, with all the properties
and annuities which it enjoyed in the time of the idiot kings. The
Inquisition no longer enforces with fire the censures of the Church,
and men are no longer compelled by legal process to pay tithes. But for
these losses the Church has received a heavy compensation. The priests
and inquisitors who ruled the childish court of Spain would allow no
independence to the Mexican Church, but supplied, by royal appointment,
all the candidates for vacant bishoprics and chapters, while the
Vice-king was allowed to fill the inferior offices of the Church.
By the partial separation of Church and state which took place in
1833, the Church of Mexico became independent of the state. The
chapters acquired the right of electing their own bishops; the
bishops, by virtue of their spiritual authority, appointing the
priests and exercising control over all Church property as _quasi_
corporations-sole, at least over all property not vested in religious
communities, if practically there could be said to be any real
exception. What that newly-acquired power of the Mexican bishops
amounts to, we in the United States, from our own experience of the
same authority, can judge.
STATISTICS OF THE CHURCH.
That the reader may know how extensive is this money-power of the
bishops, I subjoin an extract from a statistical chart[63] published by
Senor _Lerdo de Tejado_, _First Official de Ministerio de Fomento_, the
following synopsis of the clergy and their incomes:
"There is one archbishop, the Archbishop of Mexico, and eleven bishops,
and one to be created at Vera Cruz. There are 184 prebends and 1229
parishes. The total number of ecclesiastics is 3223.[64] There are 146
convents of monks and 59 convents of nuns, and 8 colleges for
propagating the faith. The convents of monks are inhabited by 1139
persons, and there are 1541 nuns in convents, and with them 740 young
girls and 870 servants. There are 238 persons in the colleges for
propagating the faith." This is less than half the number of the
_religios_ under the vice-kings, while the riches of the Church have
immensely increased, as we shall presently see.
REVENUE OF THE CHURCH.
I translate from the same author, in a note, statistics upon the
much-agitated question of the wealth of the Church of Mexico,[65] from
which it will be seen that the total amount consumed in the maintenance
of these 3223 persons, is annually $20,000,000, besides the very large
sums expended in the repairs and ornaments of an enormous number of
churches, and in gifts at the shrines of the different images, which
can not be appropriated to the maintenance of the clergy. This sum of
$20,000,000, if fairly divided among them, would yield an abundant
support, though not an extravagant living; but, unfortunately, the
greatest portion of this immense sum is absorbed by the bishops, while
the priests of the villages contrive to exist by the contributions they
wring out of the _peons_. At the time of the census, 1793, the twelve
bishops had $539,000[66] appropriated to their support; but now their
revenues are so mixed up with the revenues of the Church, that it is
impossible to say how much these twelve successors of the apostles
appropriate to their own support.
MONEY-POWER OF THE CHURCH.
In place of the Inquisition which the reformed Spanish government took
away from the Church of Mexico, the Church now wields the power of
wealth, almost fabulous in amount, which is practically in the hands of
a close corporation-sole. The influence of the Archbishop, as the
substantial owner of half the property in the city of Mexico, gives him
a power over his tenants unknown under our system of laws. Besides
this, a large portion of the Church property is in money, and the
Archbishop is the great loan and trust company of Mexico. Nor is this
power by any means an insignificant one. A bankrupt government is
overawed by it. Men of intellect are crushed into silence; and no
opposition can successfully stand against the influence of this Church
lord, who carries in his hands the treasures of heaven, and in his
money-bags the material that moves the world. To understand the full
force of his power of money, it must be borne in mind that Mexico is a
country proverbial for recklessness in all conditions of life; for
extravagant living and extravagant equipages; a country where a man's
position in society is determined by the state he maintains; a country,
the basis of whose wealth is the mines of precious metal; where
princely fortunes are quickly acquired and suddenly lost, and where
hired labor has hardly a cash value. In such a country, the power and
influence of money has a meaning beyond any idea that we can form. Look
at a prominent man making an ostentatious display of his devotion: his
example is of advantage to the Church, and the Church may be of
advantage to him, for it has an abundance of money at 6 per cent. per
annum, while the outside money-lenders charge him 2 per cent. per
month. The Church, too, may have a mortgage upon his house over-due;
and woe betide him if he should undertake a crusade against the Church.
This is a string that the Church can pull upon which is strong enough
to overawe government itself.
This money-power of the Church yet lacks completeness and concentration
to make it even a tolerable substitute for the power lost by the
abolition of the Inquisition, as this wealth is distributed among 12
independent bishops. But, having succeeded in establishing the temporal
power of her bishops in Mexico more firmly than in the United States,
the Papal court made another step in advance. In 1852, Mexico was
electrified with delight at the condescension of the Holy Father in
sending a _nuncio_ to that city. For two full years this representative
of the Holy See was _feted_ and toasted on all hands, as little less
than the Pope himself, whom he represented. But last year all these
happy feelings were dashed with gall and wormwood by an announcement
that as the bishops controlled all this immense property by virtue of
their spiritual authority, there was a resulting trust in his favor, or
at least in favor of the Pope, whom he represented with full powers. It
was Pandora's box opened in the midst of "a happy family." There was no
disputing the nuncio's law; but to render to him an account of their
receipts and disbursements, or to deliver over the bonds and mortgages
to this agent of the Pope, was most unpleasant. The old Archbishop
keeps fast hold of the money-bags, which, so far, the keys of Saint
Peter have been unable to unlock. The battle waxes loud and fierce
between the parties and their partisans, and Santa Anna stands looking
on, dreaming of the happy time when, through the internal dissensions
of the Church, these accumulations of 300 years of robbery and false
pretenses will fall into the public treasury, and the people as well as
the government will obtain their enfranchisement.
The money-power of the Church has proved sufficiently strong to save it
from the hungry maw of a famishing government, and to stand unaffected
by the revolutions that surround it; and now and then, when too
bitterly assailed by some political reformer, it finds relief in the
assassination of the assailant, as in the case of the eloquent member
of the last Congress, who, after a violent philippic against the
corruptions of the priests, was found murdered in his chamber. And, as
in case of the inquisitorial assassinations, the crime was proved to
have been connected with a robbery. The power to overawe courts of
justice, proverbially corrupt, and the facilities with which
assassinations are procured, are now the most dreaded weapons of the
Church, and may account for the nominal conformity of the intelligent
classes.
The unbelievers in Mexico, though considerable in numbers, are not
organized with a positive creed. Theirs is only a negative
existence--unbelief; and they are generally found conforming outwardly,
as a more convenient and prudent course than running a tilt with the
well-organized forces of the Church.
There is nothing peculiar in the spiritual powers of the Church of
Mexico, as these powers are common to all Catholic countries, and vary
only with the ignorance and brutality of the people; the more degraded
the people, the greater is the power of the priest and bishop. The
intelligent Catholic, educated among Protestants, looks upon his priest
as a religious instructor, and interprets the _ego te absolvo_ as
rather a matter of form, meaning little more than that he will
intercede for him. He has caught and is applying a Protestant idea
unwittingly. But with the gross multitude who constitute the mass of
the Spanish-American population, the priest is the God of the people;
his giving or withholding absolution is a matter of life or death; and,
however corrupt and debauched he may be, he still holds jurisdiction
over the pains of hell and the bliss of heaven. For a reasonable
consideration in money, he will shut up the one and open the other. The
offering in the mass of the bloodless sacrifice of Jesus Christ, as it
is called, is not sufficient for the Catholic in a Protestant country,
but the priest must also preach a sermon every Sabbath, like a
Protestant minister, though he still holds to the efficacy of the mass
in conferring blessings on the living and the believing dead. The
preaching of the priest is a rare thing in an exclusively Catholic
country. The mass is his livelihood, and if he be the head of a
community, or a popular priest, he often makes a profit in taking in
masses to say, and letting out the job at a discount. The whole matter
may be summed up by saying that the more profoundly ignorant the people
are, the more devotional do they become, so that the priest has always
a pecuniary interest in the ignorance of the people, and if he makes
any effort toward their enlightenment, it is an effort made directly
against his own pecuniary interests and the income of his office.
WORSHIP OF IMAGES.
The most ancient anti-Catholic, I might with propriety say, Protestant
sect, whose form of synagogue worship is congregational, and who are
republican at heart, though too often submitting to a despotism, are
the Jews. Between these two, the Jew and the Catholic, there exists an
unmitigated hostility. The Catholic reviles the Jew with a sin of
which, most likely, his own ancestors were not guilty,[67] and the Jew
curses the Nazarene for the idolatry of his worshipers. He will make no
allowances for the nice distinction between adoration and worship, and
insists that the making the likeness of any _thing_ to be set up in a
place of worship is idolatry, and that the image of the cross is as
much an image as the image of Him who hung thereon. And in all this the
Jew is right, if we are to obey the commandment of God. Yet the Jew
forgets that a thousand years of trial were requisite to cure his
ancestors of their proneness to idols. After their first mission,
accomplished in the birth of Christ, God has preserved them a perpetual
witness against paganism. But so subtle is this sin, that we find
ourselves setting up sensuous representations, while we point the
finger of scorn at the Catholic, who ascribes miraculous power to an
image of the Virgin. And what is the difference, the Almighty himself
being judge, between setting up a cross in a place of worship or
ascribing miraculous power to an image, or, as is the fashion to say,
some spirit acting through the image? Are they not different stages of
the same disease, and each equally calculated to provoke the Almighty
to jealousy.
SUMMARY OF EVILS.
Image worship has another curious aspect. It is a very tolerable
thermometer by which to measure the downward progress of nations. Pagan
Rome, in times of comparative purity, had her laws against idolatry;
but as her higher classes advanced in refinement and sensuality, and
the plebeians became debased and brutalized, the whole religious ideas
of the nation degenerated into idolatry, associated with a despotic
miracle-working priesthood, and soon followed by a political despotism.
It is curious to witness how exactly it takes on the same form in
different countries in traveling this downward road. The Buddhist of
China, who has reached a thousand-fold lower level than the Catholic,
has his unmarried priesthood, his monks, and nuns, and self-imposed
penances, and tortures, and holy water, and a ritual in an unknown
tongue (Sanscrit), so strikingly resembling the Catholic as to suggest
the idea of a common origin, if such an idea were not impossible. Yet
in the moral standard they seem to have reached the point of total
depravity. Hence we might sum up the cause that have produced the
Mexican of the present day by enumerating the absence of the scriptural
idea of family relation; the despotism exercised by the priesthood with
the aid of an Inquisition, and the unnumbered toll-gates they have
placed on the road to heaven; the effeminacy of the higher classes and
debasement of the peasantry; the absorption of half the revenues of the
country in superstitious and idolatrous purposes, and the uncleanly
habits superinduced by mental and physical degradation for generations,
so that the word _leper_ is used to designate a poor man in the city
where that loathsome disease has its victims.
[63] _Grando Sinoptico de la Republica Mejicana en 1850. Por
Miguel M. Lerdo y Tejado_; approved by the Mexican Society of
Geography and Statistics.
[64] This number 3223 includes all of the 1139 monks, except the
lay brothers. The two classes of priests, those who are not monks
and those who are monks, are distinguished in Catholic countries
as seculars and regulars (_clerigos_ and _religios_). Humboldt
says the Mexican clergy are composed of 10,000 individuals
(_Essai Politique_, vol. i. p. 172), and, including the nuns, and
lay brothers and sisters, he puts the sum total of the religious
at 14,000. But in a note he gives the numbers in five of the
principal departments out of twelve, which foot up at only 5405
for the clergy of both orders.
[65] "The general revenue destined for the maintenance of the
clergy and of religious services in the republic may be divided
into four classes: first, that which appertains to the bishops
and to the canons, who form the chapter of the Cathedral; second,
those revenues which appertain to particular ecclesiastics and
chaplaincies; third, those of curates and vicars; fourth, those
of divers communities of _religios_, of both sexes.
"The first class is principally of tithes and first-fruits, the
product of which was very considerable in times past, when they
included a tenth part of all the first fruits which grew upon the
soil of the republic, and the firstlings of the cattle. But
lately this revenue has much fallen off, since by the law of the
17th of October, 1833, it is no longer obligatory upon the
cultivators to pay this contribution. Nevertheless, there still
are many persons who, for conscientious reasons, or for other
cause, continue to pay this tax, so that it produces a very
considerable sum. This part of the clergy also receive
considerable sums which have been left by devout persons for the
performance of certain annual ceremonies called
_anniversaries_.
"The collegiate church of our Lady of Guadalupe has, in addition
to a monthly lottery, which operates upon a capital of $13,000,
certain properties and other capitals of which the government
takes no account.
"Particular ecclesiastics and chaplains are supported on a
capital generally of $3000, established by certain pious persons
for that object, besides the alms of the faithful, which are
given for a certain number of masses to be applied to objects of
their devotion.
"The support of curates consists of parochial rights, viz.,
fees for baptisms, marriages, funerals, responses, and religious
celebrations (_funcions_) which, in their respective churches,
they command the faithful to make; and, finally, by the profits
which they derive from the sale of _novenas_, medals,
scapularies, ribbons (_madedas_), wax, and other objects which
the parishioners employ.
"The income of convents of monks, besides the alms which they
receive for masses, _funcions_, and funerals, which they
celebrate in the convent churches, consists of the rents of great
properties which they have accumulated in the course of ages.
"The convents of nuns are in like manner supported by the income
of great estates, with the exception of two or three convents
which possess no property, and whose inmates live on charity.
"Besides the incomes named, which pertain to the _personnel_ of
the clergy, there are, in the cathedrals and other parochial
[churches], revenues which arise from some properties and
foundations created for attending to certain dues called
"_fabrica_" which consist of all those objects necessary for the
services of this worship (_culta_).
"From the want of publicity which is generally observed in the
management of the properties and _rents_ [incomes] of the clergy,
it is impossible to fix exactly the value of one or the other;
but they can be calculated approximately by taking for the basis
those data which are within the reach of the public, which are
the total value of the production of the annual return
(_movimiento_) of the population for births, marriages, deaths,
and, finally, the devout practices which are still customary
among the greater part of the population. Observing carefully
these data, I assume, without the fear of committing a great
error, that the total amount which the clergy to-day realize in
the whole extent of the republic, for _rents_, proceeds of
tithes, parochial rights, alms, religious ceremonies
(_funcions_), and for the sale of divers objects of devotion, is
between eight and ten millions of dollars.
"Some writers have estimated the properties belonging to the
clergy at one half of the productive wealth of the nation; others
at one third part; but I can not give much credit to such
writers, as they are only calculations that rest on no certain
data. I am sure that the total amount of the property of the
clergy, for chaplaincies, foundations, and other pious uses,
together with rustic and city properties, which belong to the
divers religious corporations, amount to an enormous sum,
notwithstanding the falling off that is said to have taken place
from the amounts of former years.
"All property in the district of Mexico [federal district] is
estimated at $50,000,000, the half of which pertains to the
clergy. Uniting the product of this property to the tithes,
parochial rights, etc., I am well assured that the total of the
income of the clergy amounts to from eighteen to twenty millions
of dollars."
[66] The Archbishop of Mexico $130,000
The Bishop of Pueblo 110,000
The Bishop of Valladolid 110,000
The Bishop of Guadalajara 90,000
The Bishop of Durango 35,000
The Bishop of Monterey 30,000
The Bishop of Yucatan 20,000
The Bishop of Oajaca 18,000
The Bishop of Sonora 6,000
--------
Total individual income of twelve bishops $539,000
--_Essai Politique_, vol. i. p. 173.
The reason why the Bishop of Sonora was limited to $6000 was that
his diocese was so poor that he had that salary paid out of the
king's revenue.
[67] Most of the Jews of our day are the descendants of the
Babylonian Jews, who did not return to Jerusalem after the
Captivity, but remained in the province of Babylon until they
were driven out, some four hundred or more years after Christ;
the Babylonian, not the Jerusalem Talmud, being most commonly in
use among them.